CONCLUSIONS
Viewed from the early twenty-first century, the fate of nationalism in the new
nation-states of Southeast Asia no longer appears—even retrospectively—as
uncertain as described by Geertz in his landmark essays of 1973. With the
benefit of hindsight, the tensions between “essentialism” and “epochalism”
and the conflicts between “primordial sentiments” and “civil politics” once
identified and emphasized by Geertz no longer seem to have been so crucial
to the varying fates of nationalism across the region. Nor do the diverging